Welcome To Marwen: The figure picture

Like many children of the '80s, my life was nudged in a specific direction by Bob Zemeckis and his little film about the boy whose mum tried to fuck him in the past. Zemeckis channelled 1.21 gigawatts of power into my interest in cinema, and I repaid him by watching everything else he made, up to and including Beowulf. But his forays into motion capture left me as cold as CG Tom Hanks' dead doll's eyes, and forgive me father, for I have forsaken Bob this past decade; not one of his post-2007 films have passed mine eyes.

But then along came Welcome To Marwen, with its intriguing blend of motion capture and live action, and its bizarre claim to be based on a true story despite having a trailer full of scenes that appeared to be from a spectacularly violent, war-movie version of Toy Story, and like Doc Brown I figured: what the hell.

Steve Carell engages Serious Steve Mode for his role as Mark Hogancamp, a lonely and apparently eccentric man who takes photos of dolls posed in WWII costumes and situations, and who has a thing for women's shoes. Hogancamp's true story was told - reasonably well, by all accounts (I haven't seen it) - in Marwencol, a 2010 documentary that provided the inspiration for Zemeckis' film. The reasons for Hogancamp's model behaviour are undeniably fascinating and tragic, but the first problem with Welcome To Marwen is that it takes two hours to explain them when they could have been dealt with in a ten-minute prologue. This has two immediate effects: firstly, to summarise the premise here would count as a spoiler for the whole film; secondly, Zemeckis needs to pad out the running time somehow. And if there's one thing Hogancamp's story doesn't have that Bob Zemeckis can add, it's a metric fucktonne of motion capture action sequences.

And so about half of Welcome To Marwen consists of those war-movie Toy Story scenes, in which 'Hogie', a heroic GI action figure in 1940s Belgium (who looks suspiciously like Steve Carell) is repeatedly captured by Nazi action figures, then rescued by a collection of sexy female action figures who kill the Nazis in increasingly violent fashion. Hogancamp merely photographed these imagined stories; Zemeckis splashes them on the screen in stunningly-realised fantasy sequences that are undeniably fun to watch, but which add little to the film's emotional core that the photographs don't. In fact these sequences unbalance the story, creating a weird tonal mixture of effects-driven action comedy and weighty drama that is going to be a nightmare to sell to audiences. Here's a film that wants to cover transvestism, Neo-Nazism, hate crime, violence as a solution, substance abuse, PTSD and other assorted mental health issues, but at the same time foregrounds cutting-edge CG action and visual gags. It's certainly not boring, but it is a little uncomfortable.

Carell is fine as Hogancamp (although clearly has an absolute ball as his 1/6th scale alter-ego), and Leslie Mann is wonderful as his near-mythically non-judgemental neighbour Nicol, but every other character is a cliché of some kind or other - Gwendoline Christie's Russian carer, for example, is teeth-itchingly ill-advised. Zemeckis' script, co-written with Caroline Thompson, is clunky and obvious at times: a barman drops a lead weight of exposition on a character who is only there to receive that exposition on our behalf, for example, and unnecessary narrative devices are crowbarred in to ramp up dramatic tension. Good Characters 100% accept Mark for who he is while Bad Characters 100% reject him for being a weirdo, as if the script is terrified of offending anyone with nuance. And Zemeckis can't resist a distractingly meta, extended Back To The Future-referencing gag which made me wonder if he'd lobbed it in after watching Ready Player One.

There's a truly original and inspiring film in here somewhere, but you can't help thinking it's the one that somebody else made eight years ago. Hogancamp deserves to be acknowledged for his art and the events that led him to create it, but he probably didn't deserve to have those events diminished by embellishing them with button-pushing melodrama and a side order of mega-budget kids' holiday filler. Welcome To Marwen isn't a total failure while you're watching it, and if more people look up Mark Hogancamp as a result then all well and good. But I'm fairly sure Bob Zemeckis can do better than this, and I hope it's not another ten years before I can be arsed to find out.

Saturday Playlist #11: Pixar

Those Pixar films are good, aren't they? Have you seen that Toy Story? It's brillz.

While Pixar primarily cater for the eyes with their spanky computer-generated images of cute toy aliens and big furry monsters with forty billion hairs individually hand-drawn by Californian dudes in loud Hawaiian shirts, they also thoughtfully provide nice music to accompany their films.

All the Pixar scores have been provided by just three composers: Randy Newman, known round these parts as Randy Nude Man (because it's a bit childish round these parts) his cousin Thomas Newman and Michael Giacchino, who as we all know is a bit of a god. Now, thanks to the combined miracles of Spotify and The Incredible Suit, some of the "choicest" "cuts" from their scores are available to be piped directly into your listening sacs, and it won't cost you a single pee.

But before you do the clicky thing, ponder the thoughts of modern philosophers Jedward, who recently Tweeted the following thought-provoking nugget:

Woah.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #11:

PIXAR

Toy Story 3

It comes as absolutely no surprise that Toy Story 3 is great. Every film Pixar have made is great, except the one of which we do not speak at The Incredible Suit. In fact Toy Story 3 is almost boringly great; predictably amazing; tediously terrific. It was always going to be good and it comfortably meets expectations.

Which isn't to say that it's perfect: it's probably the least brilliant of the series, opening with a shameless rip off of its own predecessor's prologue and meandering wildly in its middle act while it tries to find the well-worn groove of the Rescue Mission Movie the prequels so successfully reinvented. Fortunately by the time it settles down to a structurally flawless finale that had me laughing and crying snot all over the woman in front of me, its minor faults are easily forgiven.

And while Big Baby and the cymbal-banging monkey would have scared the Lincoln Logs out of me as a kid and Mr Potato Head's new look was the funniest thing I've seen at the cinema since Toy Story 2, there was one criminally underused star of Toy Story 3:

What I don't need now, though, is any more sequels from Pixar. All their films are so carefully designed to take their characters in a perfect arc that it feels like a waste to go back to them, even though Toy Story 2 and 3 were so good. So while I look forward to 2012's Brave, I can't get excited about next year's sequel to the Pixar film of which we do not speak, or the following year's Monsters, Inc 2. A Mr Pricklepants movie, on the other hand...

I had to watch Toy Story 3 in 3D because I won the tickets in a competition at London's Barbican. Like every film in existence, there was no need whatsoever for it to be in 3D. Which meant that I sat there wearing what felt like a giant pair of swimming goggles which didn't fit over my glasses properly and cut out half the light from the screen so I could barely see anything in the gloomier scenes FOR NO REASON. In fact Mrs The Incredible Suit got so fed up she took them off altogether and watched it in perfectly bright fuzzyvision.

We thought we were being clever by taking along the 3D specs we were forced to buy at the Odeon the other week but guess what? They weren't compatible with the Barbican's projection system. Which makes Odeon's trumpeting of their green credentials by celebrating the fact that you can re-use their glasses pretty hollow when every other chain is cranking out more tons of plastic for their own systems.

I really, REALLY hate 3D.

To comment on this post, click here

Pigeon Impossible / Alma

Pixar films are great, I think we can all agree on that. If we can't then it's no wonder there's so much war and violence in the world. CGI animated films by other studios, however, are less good. Dreamworks' Shrek and Shrek 2 are fine, but Madagascar? Happy Feet? Ice Age? They're like Tesco's Frosted Flakes to Pixar's Frosties.

I don't know why this is. There are obscenely skilled animators out there making great short films that could be employed by someone other than Pixar. I don't know, maybe they'll only work for Pixar and would rather live in a hovel eating Tesco Frosted Flakes than work for anyone else.

Man, I'm hungry.

Anyway. To illustrate my point, here's Pigeon: Impossible, a short made by the freakishly talented Lucas Martell. It's so Pixary it could have a cameo by John Ratzenberger, especially with its The Incredibles-esque music. It took Martell five years to make, so you'd better appreciate it.



Whereas Pigeon: Impossible could happily park itself before a feature-length "kids' film" like Toy Story or Up, Alma is a different teapot of turbot altogether. It's brilliant, beautiful and, well, I won't tell you what else it is. Watch it a second time knowing what you know and it's a completely different experience.



Alma was made by Spanish animator Rodrigo Blaas, which is probably the best name of anyone ever.

There are loads more great shorts like this out there being made by people who aren't Pixar or Dreamworks. The Incredible Suit supports them in their efforts (as long as they're good, no timewasters please) and wishes them well in the future. Seek them out why don't you, there's nothing else to do on a miserable Friday afternoon except watch Diagnosis Murder. Amanda's boyfriend Ron did it.

More on Pigeon: Impossible
More on Alma

To comment on this post, click here

Up

This week’s Top 10 greatest Pixar films, like, ever:
(Last week’s positions in brackets)

1. (1) The Incredibles
2. (2) Toy Story 2
3. (3) Toy Story
4. (4) Monsters, Inc.
5. (New Entry) Up
6. (5) Finding Nemo
7. (6) Ratatouille
8. (7) WALL•E
9. (8) A Bug’s Life
10. (9) Cars

I couldn't write a review of Up because I was too busy crying like a baby, so here's a pictographic appraisal from our guest reviewer:

I did, however, have to endure this exchange with the chap at the box office (which took place at about 5.30pm):

The Incredible Suit: “Can I have two tickets for Up at 8.40, please”

The Chap At The Box Office: (incomprehensible mumbling) “…We only have tickets for 6.40 or 9.10”

The Incredible Suit: “Really? Has it sold out already?”

The Chap At The Box Office: (slowly, as if talking to an imbecile) “Nnooo, we just… don’t have a showing at 8.40”

The Incredible Suit: (slowly, as if talking to an imbecile) “This is Up we’re talking about, yeah?”

The Chap At The Box Office: (pauses, as if world has been turned inside out) “You said District 9”

The Incredible Suit: (slowly, because definitely talking to an imbecile) “Nnooo, I said ‘two tickets for Up at 8.40’”

There then followed a lengthy pause in which The Chap At The Box Office stared at me very hard while he tried to work out if I was taking the piss or if there had been some kind of ripple in the space-time continuum. He then grudgingly gave me my tickets for Up and went, presumably, to get the popcorn removed from his ears.

Say it out loud to yourself. Up. District 9. Up. District 9. Up. District 9. Is there even the most microscopic phonetic similarity in those two film titles that could cause one to be mistaken for the other? Of course not. This is why God invented online booking.

To comment on this post, click here